Podcaster Joe Rogan said several of President Donald Trump’s legal battles against press outlets, such as the BBC’s “crazy” edit of Trump’s speech on Jan. 6, 2021, “seem to be legitimate.”
Two BBC executives resigned after a report showed that the outlet spliced together two clips of Trump’s speech that were 54 minutes apart, making it appear as if the president called for violence at the U.S. Capitol. Rogan said the outlet’s edit is “nuts,” and they were “publicly” lying against a U.S. president on the internet, which “anybody can see.”
“Like, it is the clearest indication of how that woke s*** was rotting people’s brains, and it is still, but just less, you know what I mean? It was, like, on the march then, and they all felt like they had to go along with it. And so, ‘By any means necessary, we must make sure,’ so they decided to paint a different version of what he said, and they’re f***ed now,” Rogan said on the Joe Rogan Experience Tuesday.
Rogan also said CBS News’s 60 Minutes similarly edited its interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris, but did so “the other way” to make it appear she had “a good answer.” He said news outlets aren’t supposed to be “the propaganda arm” of whatever political party they support.
Rogan added the next step is a “rejection” of this ideology, but “the scary part” of that leads to an overcorrection, suggesting the United States could “go, like, white nationalists.” He said the “ultimate expression” of the American political division is evident in Charlie Kirk’s assassination, suggesting the country may be at “step seven” toward a “bona fide Civil War.”
Trump’s legal team is giving the BBC until Friday to retract any “false, defamatory, disparaging, and inflammatory statements” about him, according to a Sunday letter. If they fail to do so, a civil action lawsuit seeking up to $1 billion in damages will be filed.
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Outgoing BBC Director-General Tim Davie said during a staff call that journalists “have to fight for our journalism,” though he didn’t mention Trump in this call. Davie added that the outlet has made “some mistakes that have cost us,” but encouraged people “to fight for that.”
In June, Rogan debated Trump’s legal battles against media outlets with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), in which Sanders argued the lawsuits “[have] the impact of intimidating [the] media.” Rogan said “deceptive editing” by outlets is not “objective journalism,” but rather “campaigning” for someone.